On account of the Angels and Yankees don’t begin their ALCS match-up for like another 20 days, I was going to wait a bit on this. But seeing as Dave Cameron has already submitted his preview, and seeing how Dave is the boss of me, I guess it makes sense to drop this record.

Rather than look at the match-ups per se, I thought it might be interesting to look at a player who’s played for both teams: Bobby Abreu.

In particular, I’d like to try and answer a question that has been bothering me a little since these playoffs began.

The question: Is Bobby Abreu fast?

The answer: It’s hard to tell.

At first glance, you might say, no. Bobby Abreu doesn’t look fast. Or, at least he doesn’t fit our image of a speed merchant. He’s got a thick trunk, thick legs, and — not that it’s entirely relevant — a little bit of a pudgy face. Who among the games bona fide base stealers has Bobby Abreu’s body? Matt Kemp is bigger (6-foot-3, 226) and he stole 34 bases this year, but he’s also Abreu’s junior by 10 years. Hanley Ramirez? David Wright? Brandon Phillips? Mark Reynolds? They’re all near the same size, but all are at least five years younger and all stole fewer bases at lower success rates.

Abreu’s basic counting stats are those of a legitimate stolen base threat. Abreu stole 30 bases this year and has averaged 28.4 SB since 1998, when he became a full-timer with the Phillies. Over the same span, he’s averaged only 9.1 CS, good for a 75.8% success rate — above any break-even point you’d care to use.

Like Linear Weights? Using Tom Tango’s Custom Linear Weights matrix and supposing a league average run environment for every player (not ideal, but much easier for me), Abreu comes away with 1.96 SB Runs, good for 18th among 154 qualified batters. His SB Runs per attempt comes out to 0.052, good for 30th among the 80 qualified batters with at least 10 attempts. In other words, not elite, but still above average.

What’s another way we might evaluate speed? How about defensive range? Well, this is where it gets ugly for Abreu, who this year posted a -5.2 UZR/150. Not terrible, right? Sure, but that’s only because Abreu’s arm was worth 6.9 runs. His Range Runs above Average (RngR) was -13.8, PLACING HIM BEHIND BEHIND BRAD HAWPE… IN FEWER GAMES. Last year, it was worse: -29.0 RngR. Nor was his arm able to help so much, thus giving him a season-ending -25.3 UZR/150. Ick. That’s disgusting.

Finally, Speed Score might be another way to evaluate Abreu, but I’ll admit, I’m a little suspicious. Consider some of these Spd numbers:

Player		Spd
R. Ibanez	4.8
R. Howard	4.8
F. Gutierrez	4.8
H. Pence	4.5
M. Cameron	4.3

Any measure of speed that ranks Raul Ibanez and Ryan Howard either equal to, or above, Franklin Gutierrez, Hunter Pence, and Mike Cameron ought to be approached carefully. For what it’s worth, Abreu finished with a 5.6 Spd, above the league average of 5.0.

Can we conclude anything? Hard to say. The naked eye and some of the numbers suggest a player with average speed at best. The stolen base numbers suggests a talented base stealer. Maybe the reality is that Abreu relies more on guile than pure speed to steal his bases and that, for some reason, said guile doesn’t translate to the field. That’s a strange conclusion, I think, but the most reasonable one considering.

It’s not really going out on a limb to say that Fire Joe Morgan was a great site. Before the identities of its authors were revealed, I used to read it and think, “Who are these anonymous superstars of the prose form?” After I found out their identities, I used to read it and think, “Figures.” But another thing I thought was, “I love this so much I want to marry it.”

What made it so excellent? Well, it was about baseball, for one. And also, it had a great Revenge of the Nerds vibe to it. I mean, sure, Bill Plaschke could talk about heart and guts and grit all he wanted, but he was very clearly less smart than the FJM entourage — and FJM represented us. Ultimately, though, it was just the excellence of the writing that made the site what I like to call a Triumph of the Human Spirit. Honestly, I’m pretty sure it could’ve been a blog about Ugandan tapestry and I would’ve been on board with it.

Despite the wild success that was FJM, sites that have attempted to mimic its formula often come off as clumsy and/or mean-spirited. I’m not smart enough to know why exactly. Maybe because that particular ship has sailed. Maybe because the newer versions tend more towards the ad hominem side of things. Maybe because announcing (and sportswriting) is actually pretty hard and anyone, when absolutely required to produce content with some frequency, will have to sacrifice quality occasionally.

Having said that, I think that it’s probably also the case that many announcers make it hard on themselves when they provide absolutely nothing in the way of evidence to support certain of their claims. Or so was my thought process while listening to Buck Flippin’ Martinez today.

This was the first game of the Angels-Red Sox series that I watched in a residence — as opposed to the area watering hole where I generally partake of America’s Pastime. Accordingly, it was the first in which I was privvy to the musings of Mr. Buck Martinez. Buck — who I’ll refer to as BM — BM was talking a lot today, and I thought it would make sense to apply a little due diligence to some of his more notable claims.

Below are five of BM’s statements. For each statement, I’ve provided the context in which it was made and also a brief commentary.

Commençons!

#1
The Context
BM is mentioning how L.A. is facing Clay Buchholz for the first time since last summer.

BM Said
“They’ll be anxious to take a lot of pitches and see his stuff.”

Comment
When I heard that, man-oh-man, did I laugh snarkily. I says to my friend, I says, “Has this guy ever seen the Angels bat?! Sure, Figgins and Abreu are patient, but the rest of the team is a giant whiff factory.”

There were a couple flaws with my statement. First, there’s actually no such thing as a whiff factory. Second, BM is almost right. Almost.

It’s true, the Angels don’t walk too much. They finished 18th in that category this season at 8.9%. However — and this is kinda interesting — the Angels also don’t swing that much. L.A. actually finished with the seventh lowest Swing%, with a mark of 43.7%, behind teams you’d expect, like the Yankees and Red Sox.

Score half a point for Buck.

#2
The Context
BM is analyzing Buchholz’s prospects for pitching a good game.

What BM Said
“Buchholz will be good, so long as he doesn’t start improvising on the mound.”

Comment
I assume that what BM means is that Buchholz ought to stick to his team’s game plan and just throw whatever Victor Martinez says. He (i.e. BM) mentioned something to this effect in the fourth inning or so. In any event, is that really the thing that’s separating Buchholz from greatness? Is Buchholz some sort of rogue loner who throws his way or no way at all? My guess is no. My guess is that BM just said whatever he wanted to say.

The thing separating Buchholz from greatness is probably the fact that his K- and BB-rates are almost exactly league average and his HR/FB rate was a little high (15.7%) this season.

#3
The Context
BM is giving entirely anecdotal reasons for the Angels success this season.

What BM Said
“… and Torii Hunter’s enthusiasm is infectious.”

Comment
This is probably not the main reason for the Angels’ success this year. I’m sure, yes, it makes the games much more fun. But scoring runs and preventing runs: that’s how you win games.

Also, it makes Torii Hunter sound like a sick person. “Hey, everyone, just a reminder: don’t forget to get immunized this year. Torii Hunter’s enthusiasm is infectious.”

#4
The Context
Abreu takes second after Buchholz’s pick-off attempt gets by Youkilis.

What BM Said
“A lot of times we discount the stolen base threat.”

Comment
I would say that never before have I heard an announcer discount the stolen base threat. You know what I have heard? I’ve heard announcers talk ad nauseam about the “pressure” a base stealer puts on the defense, or how a base stealer is able to “distract” the pitcher.

Baseball Prospectus covered this in Baseball Between the Numbers. If I remember correctly, yes, there is a small gain in batter OPS when a bonafide base stealer occupies first. But even then it’s negligible, and way overstated by the announcerati.

#5
The Context
Dustin Pedroia is batting (both in the first and fifth — almost identical comments!).

What BM Said
“Pedroia loves anything hard.”

Comment
Because you are very probably a man between the ages of 18-49, I’m sure I don’t have to explain how many entendres there are in such a statement. What BM meant, of course, is that Pedroia likes fastballs. Fastballs are his favorite things to hit. It’s fastballs or bust for Little Dustin Pedroia.

Because you are also very probably a baseball nerd, your inclination is to probably go to Pedroia’s FanGraphs player page and look up his Pitch Type Values. Well, no need; I already did it.

BM is right to say that Pedroia hits fastballs well — he’s got a wFB/C of 0.63. But he also has a 0.92 wSL/C and 2.56 CB/C. So, sure, Pedroia hits the fastball well. But to say he loves anything hard… well, that’s inappropriate in more than one way, turns out.

Perhaps you’ve heard this story. It’s about an old man with a long beard. The man is famous and the beard famouser. People come from all over the land to see him and it. It’s quite the attraction, this beard.

Well one day, one of these “beard pilgrims” (as I’ll call them) comes to the old man, marvels at his (i.e. the old man’s) beard, and asks, quite innocently, “Do you sleep with it under or on top of the covers?”

The old man can’t remember off-hand, and, when he goes to bed that night, he’s unable to sleep. He’s thinking about where he should put the beard. Always, his whole life, he’s slept just fine without ever once considering whether his beard ought to go under or on top of the covers. But now — now that he’s become conscious of it — he’s unable to think of anything else.

This story is a basic illustration of the significance of what Mihály Csíkszentmihályi and other positive psychologists refer to as “flow.” Flow, as the interweb tells us, “is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.”

I don’t know what the opposite of flow is, but whatever its name, that’s what the old man is feeling when he becomes conscious of his beard.

What does this have to do with baseball? Barely anything. But enough to keep going.

There’s a saying in my country — which, on account of my country is the US of A, it’s probably your country, too. The saying is “try easier.” Any English-speaker probably has an intuitive sense of the phrase’s meaning. But one way to define it might be to say that to “try easier” is to re-find a state of flow — not by “efforting,” but by relaxing.

In the case of the old man, the way for him to fight his insomnia is not by continuing to dwell on the positioning of his beard, but forgetting about it entirely.

It’s something you see in baseball all the time. A batter goes through the sort of slump — 0-for-12, 1-for-17 — that’s almost entirely the product of random variation. I don’t know what the exact odds are of it happening, but even a platonic .300-hitter can go 1-for-17 with some degree of frequency. Only problem is, sometimes when a guy goes 1-for-17, he starts “pressing.” Maybe he re-examines his swing. Maybe he switches something around. Instead of “trying easier,” he goes the other way. He efforts.

I’m not sure if Los Angeles Angel Jered Weaver is familiar with the concept of flow. (Given the way he spells his first name, all bets are off in re his body of knowledge.) But his manner of pitching ought to serve as an object lesson in trying easier.

I mentioned in the preview to Game Two that, while Weaver’s fastball checks in as below average according to Pitch Type Value, all of his secondary pitches rate above average. If you take his wFB/C (-0.33) and subtract from it both his wCB/C (0.58) and wCH/C (1.87) you get -2.78. Do the same thing to all 77 pitchers who qualify on the FanGraphs leaderboards, and Weaver ranks 13th, behind some other guys notable for their excellent offspeed/breaking pitches, such as Adam Wainwright, A.J. Burnett, and Javier Vazquez.

Furthermore, among those same qualified pitchers who throw a curveball more than 5% of the time, Weaver has the sixth lowest average curveball velocity (71.7 mph). Among the pitchers who throw a change-up at least 5% of the time, Weaver has the 11th slowest (80.4 mph).

Friday night versus Boston, Weaver threw 12 change-ups and 17 curveballs. His Whiff% on the former was 50%, which compares favorably to Rich Harden’s league-leading 48.6%*. His Whiff% on the latter was 30% (3/10, plus three called strikes and two foul balls), which is close to Adam Wainwright’s fifth place 36.7%*.

*Small sample sizes be damned!

There’s something captivating about a pitcher who not only gets by but gets ahead while throwing slowly. I’m sure there’s more than one reason why we like it. But my guess is that this idea of “trying easier” is one of them.

Obligatory Preview of Game Three

I used up all my words eulogizing Jered Weaver. Sorry about that. Still, believe me when I say that Game Three (a) takes place in Boston, (b) airs Sunday around noon EDT, and (c) features L.A. of Anaheim’s Scott Kazmir versus Boston’s Clay Buchholz — or “Kid Clay,” as he’s known to no one but R.J. Anderson.

In case you didn’t notice, Los Angeles Angel John Lackey threw what is commonly referred to as “a gem” last night. Over 7.1 innings, he allowed zero runs against a Boston lineup that finished the season second only to the Yankees in wOBA, with a .352 mark.

Still, looking at the final line, I couldn’t help but be suspicious that Lackey had gotten a little lucky.

Consider: against 27 batters Lackey recorded only four strikeouts, only 10 groundballs, and allowed five line drives. By percentage, that comes to a 14.8% K-rate, 37.0% GB-rate — both of which are worse than league average for pitchers (16% and 43.2%, respectively) — and an LD-rate of 18.5%, which is just a shade better than the league average of 18.9%.

Well, in a move that is entirely uncharacteristic for me, I decided to probe even further, and turned to the Expected Run Values per Event table over at StatCorner for help. If we plug in the relevant events from Lackey’s performance, we get something that looks very much like this:

Event	RV/E	Lackey	RV Lackey
K	-0.105	4	-0.42
BB	0.329	1	0.329
HBP	0.345	0	0
LD	0.384	5	1.92
GB	0.053	10	0.53
OFB	0.046	4	0.184
IFB	-0.096	2	-0.192
HR	1.394	0	0

Total			2.351

That’s a lot better than league average for 7.1 innings of work. The key for Lackey seems to be that he only walked the one batter — Victor Martinez in the sixth. The infield fly balls don’t hurt, either — if for no other reason than they aren’t other things.

The one caveat here — or at least the one I’m smart enough to consider — is that fly balls leave ballparks at right around 11%, or about one in every nine. Given the lowish RV/E for OFB above, home runs seem to be omitted from that number. If that’s so, it might make sense to add 4/9 of a home run (ca 0.62 R) to Lackey’s line, which leaves us right around three runs, and creeping closer to league average.

On Bobby Abreu

Bobby Abreu acted so much like Bobby Abreu last night, it’s crazy. In four plate appearances, the Angels right fielder saw 25 pitches (over 6/PA) and hit none of them fair. His line for the night? Zero at-bats, four walks, one run scored.

Despite his shyness with the bat, Abreu finished the game second only to Hunter (who jacked a three-run donger) in batting WPA with a 0.066 mark.

Furthermore, though Abreu’s four plate appearances made up only 10.8% of the team’s 37 overall, he saw 18.8% of the 133 pitches that Boston pitchers threw.

On Tonight’s Game

This evening, Jered Weaver pitches for L.A. of Anaheim. One thing that means is that we’ll probably see Jeff Mathis again. Mathis has caught in 21 of Weaver’s starts, versus only 13 for Napoli.

Weaver himself has slightly peculiar make-up so far as his stuff goes. His per-100 marks for his secondary pitches are all above average — 0.97 wSL/C, 0.58 wCB/C, and 1.87 wCH/C. It’s his fastball that’s hurt him, coming in at -0.33 runs below average per 100 and -6.6 runs below average overall. Angels fans should hold their breaths when they see Mathis put a single finger down — and expect above-average results in other cases.

In conjunction with R.J.’s article on Jon Lester, I thought it might make sense to take a look at what batters he (Lester, that is — not R.J. Anderson) would probably be facing in Game One. Here are the last four lineups that Scioscia deployed versus lefty starters before L.A. of Anaheim clinched on September 28 (versus Eveland, Gio Gonzalez, Pettite, and Holland, respectively).

Sep 26		Sep 25		Sep 21		Sep 20
C Figgins 3B	C Figgins 3B	C Figgins 3B	C Figgins 3B
B Abreu	RF	E Aybar	SS	E Aybar	SS	E Aybar	SS
T Hunter CF	B Abreu	RF	B Abreu RF	T Hunter CF
V Guerrero DH	V Guerrero DH	V Guerrero DH	V Guerrero DH
J Rivera LF	T Hunter CF	T Hunter CF	J Rivera LF
K Morales 1B	J Rivera LF	J Rivera LF	H Kendrick 2B
H Kendrick 2B	K Morales 1B	H Kendrick 2B	K Morales 1B
J Mathis C	H Kendrick 2B	K Morales 1B	G Matthews Jr. RF
M Izturis SS	J Mathis C	J Mathis C	J Mathis C

The two from Sep 25 and 21 contain exactly the same personnel, just with Morales and Kendrick switched. Morales moved back ahead of Kendrick on the 26th. September 26 features Izturis at shortstop in lieu of Aybar, although Aybar is the starter. Gary Matthews Jr. spelled Abreu in right field on Sep 20.

Using those lineups as a guide, here’s a probable lineup for tonight’s game (with this year’s platoon split, for what it’s worth):

Probable	2009 v L
C Figgins 3B	.246/.325/.305  	
E Aybar	SS	.325/.356/.448
B Abreu	RF	.267/.348/.386
V Guerrero DH	.250/.276/.410
T Hunter CF	.336/.400/.578
J Rivera LF	.333/.385/.645  	
K Morales 1B	.296/.319/.481
H Kendrick 2B	.313/.331/.500
J Mathis C	.228/.295/.329

If you want to be dogmatic about lineup optimization, then you probably move Abreu or Hunter into the two-hole and move Aybar back to sixth or seventh. Still, this isn’t as crazy as some lineups we see where you have a “good bat-handler” (a la Willie Bloomquist) batting in the most important spot in the lineup.

Well, okay, it is a crazy for one reason: it has Jeff Mathis in it.

While Scioscia is on record as saying that he doesn’t employ either a strict platoon or personal catchers, he’s fielded Mathis for John Lackey’s last 16 starts. That suggests that Mathis will start tonight.

Do you want to know Jeff Mathis’s wOBA? It’s .267.

Do you want to know Mike Napoli’s? I’ll give you a hint: it’s better. (.362 to be exact.)

Of course, the book on Mathis is that he’s the better defender and/or that the pitching staff works better with him. The former point is tough to be conclusive about. There’s no UZR for catchers. According to Baseball Reference, Mathis’s CS% is 26% on 70 attempts. Napoli’s is 22% on 95 attempts*. As for the latter point, it’s also hard to effectively analyze a catcher’s effect on pitcher performance. You wanna use Catcher ERA, you say? Fine with me; just don’t tell R.J. Anderson that. (Or Keith Woolner, for that matter.)

*One bizarre thing: Napoli has registered an assist on only 13 of the 21 caught-stealings that’ve occurred while he’s been catching. Which, that means his CS numbers aren’t as good, but also that a lot of guys are getting picked-off for some reason that probably has to do with the pitcher.

Here’s something we do know: that, according to StatCorner, Napoli is worth 0.037 runs above-average per plate appearance. Mathis, meanwhile, has posted a -0.053 RV/PA. That means Napoli is worth about 0.09 runs more per plate appearance than Mathis. Over four plate appearances (pretty typical for a game), that comes out to about 0.36 runs!

Of course, RV/PA presupposes a league average run environment and Jon Lester does a pretty good job suppressing runs. Even acknowledging that point, you have to be pretty sure that Mathis is worth about three-tenths of a run per game defensively. Odds are, he isn’t.

This postseason marks the third straight year (and fourth in six years) that Los Angeles of Anaheim will face Boston in the ALDS. Even the most rational of Angels fans will feel some dread at the prospect, I assume: L.A.’s record in those three previous match-ups is 1-9. And while the run differential over that same time frame (29 v 62)* doesn’t inspire great confidence either, it’s unlikely that such lopsided results are the product of anything but the random variation of a small sample size. By comparison, the season series between the two was 5-4 in favor of the Halos, who outscored the Sox by a slight margin (44 v 40).

*An interesting note about this: of those 62 runs Boston has scored over 10 games, 14 of them (almost a quarter) were scored in the ninth inning or later.

In terms of results, this year’s iteration of the Angels isn’t so different from the other three teams to face Boston, as their Pythagorean Wins bear out:

YR	Pyth W
2009	92
2008	88
2007	90
2004	91

What is different is the unfamiliar means by which the Angels have reached this rather familiar end. While the previous versions have had a reputation for excellent pitching, defense, and baserunning, this year’s team has bent, if not entirely broken, that mold.

Offensively, the Angels are still running a lot. Their 148 stolen bases are good for third in the majors this year, after having finished second, second, and first, respectively, in 2008, 2007, and 2004. And their defense, according to UZR, is actually better than before: they rank 11th in that metric, versus ranks of 16, 16, and 18 in 2008, 2007, 2004.

As for their hitting prowess, many readers will remember in August when L.A. fielded a lineup consisting entirely of .300 hitters. While we, the Aristocrats of Baseballing Analysis, understand that batting average isn’t necessarily the best measure of offensive production, it’s an important part of getting on base.

Nor is this a team of Willie Keelers. Regard:

YR	wOBA	Lg Rank	BB%	ISO	LD%	FB%	HR/FB
2009	0.346	3	8.9 %	0.156	18.8	0.370	0.103
2008	0.325	18	8.0 %	0.145	18.0	0.355	0.098
2007	0.332	14	8.4 %	0.133	17.1	0.358	0.073
2004	0.335	16	7.3 %	0.147	19.2	0.358	0.096

The numbers are up across the board, really. More walks, more line drives (with the exception of ’04), more fly balls, and more fly balls leaving the yard.

The improvement is the result mostly of a key addition (Bobby Abreu and his .390 OBP), a career year (Torii Hunter matched his career high in wRAA — set in 2002 — in ca. 100 fewer PAs), and a couple of break-out seasons by younger players (Kendry Morales and Erick Aybar). More PAs for Mike Napoli — and fewer for Jeff Mathis — hasn’t hurt, either.

Some other things that might surprise you about the Angels offensive renaissance:

*Kendry Morales is really good. His wOBA of .382 (on the strength of .306/.355/.569 line) was good for 32nd in the majors.

*Chone Figgins led the AL in walks with 101.

*Despite being a little funny-figured, Bobby Abreu still steals bases. He was 30/38 this year.

Oddly, as the Halos batting has reached new levels, pitching has faltered. Regard (S Rank = Starters FIP Rank / R Rank = Relievers FIP Rank):

YR	FIP	Rank	S Rank	R Rank
2009	4.45	21	21	16
2008	4.12	8	10	9
2007	4.10	4	2	16
2006	4.09	5	15	1

This’ll be the first of these four teams to enter the postseason with a team FIP outside the majors’ top ten. And the mediocrity has been spread evenly across the starters and relievers, it seems.

Reasons? There are a few. For one, both John Lackey and Ervin Santana began the year on the DL. And while Lackey has put up more or less his usual rate stats, Santana has posted a 5.02 FIP (5.57 tRA) after last year’s 3.30 FIP (3.66 tRA).

In the bullpen, the departure of Francisco Rodriguez has hurt, as the Angels have traded in his 3.22 FIP from last year for Brian Fuentes‘ 4.42 FIP this year. Also painful have been the sub-par performances of both Jose Arredondo and Scot Shields, the latter of whom is broken after years of dependable, high-leverage contributions.

Remember when I did that thing last week where I cherrypicked from Bill James for my own personal profit? Well, I’m about to do that again, stat. But before I do, a quick note on the title of the present document.

I don’t think I’m too far off base when I say that there comes a time in every man’s life when he begins to write for a nationally recognized, widely lauded baseball analysis website. Oh sure, it comes a little earlier for some of us — and here I’m thinking in particular of the 7-year-old Chinese prodigy Bang Qiu Nao, who’s done some excellent Pitchf/x stuff for the Chinese Professional Baseball League. For others of us, it comes later, maybe — or never at all, as was the case with my great uncle Vittorio who tended the land in Puglia, lived the country life, and wrote only about basketball.

One thing I’ve noticed in my own fledgling career as a baseball analyst is how you see a lot of guys who go inside the numbers, who look between the numbers, who claim to go beyond the numbers, or who just get all up on the numbers. However, despite some really extensive and boring research, I have as yet to find anyone willing to go athwart the numbers.

What does it mean to go athwart the numbers? I don’t know exactly. But I’m gonna try and do it: for my children, and my children’s children, and my children’s children’s children.

And while I’ll undoubtedly take all the credit for embracing this most overlooked of prepositions, I’ll be wrong to do so. I’ve stolen the idea wholesale from my friend Ross. Despite the fact that he’s recently given up on life — i.e. started law school* — when he was alive, Ross not only used athwart routinely, but he also wrote the most interesting possible article about stadium financing ever. If and when he’s allowed to actually practice law, someone should hire him real hard.

*I won’t say where exactly, but I will tell you: it’s where fun goes to die.

Anyway, like I say, Ross has left us here in Portland. We’re going to miss him. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to pour out the first sip of this forty in his honor…

Thank you.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming: three more from our Numbers-as-Narrative experiment.

Jeff Keppinger, Everyman, Houston
I don’t know what Keppinger’s like in real life. Maybe he cusses at strangers and kicks dogs. Maybe he stuffs ballot boxes and deals arms. But my guess is he doesn’t. My guess is, if his numbers are any indication, he’s the most considerate, responsible fellow anyone has ever met. Why do I say that? Regard (Field% and Lg Field% are at primary position only):

Season	Team	PA	K%	Lg K%	Prim Pos (Inn)	Field%	Lg Field%
2004	Mets	123	6.0%	19.0%	2B (257.2)	.987	.984
2007	Reds	276	5.0%	19.2%	SS (390.2)	.989	.972
2008	Reds	502	5.2%	19.7%	SS (880.2)	.980	.974
2009	Astros	320	11.3%	20.2%	3B (464.2)	.959	.958

These are Good Guy numbers. Keppinger has routinely struck out at a quarter or third the league rate. He’s careful. He’s capable of playing basically any position on the diamond. He’s accommodating. And when he plays those positions, maybe he doesn’t exhibit all the range in the world (his UZR/150 numbers aren’t great), but he’s sure-handed when he gets to the ball. He’s reliable.

Here’s what I think about Keppinger: I just put him down as my emergency contact number on a form I just filled out. QED.

Juan Francisco, Corner Guy, Cincinnati
Francisco’s proof that, while you can’t necessarily walk off the island, you can try to jack dongers from it all the way to the major league city of your choosing.

In how many stat categories can we name the tune that is Juan Francisco? Let’s try three (not including PAs).

Season	Team		PA	BB%	K%	ISO
2006	Reds (R)	190	3.2 %	19.2 %	0.126
2007	Reds (A)	562	4.1 %	30.1 %	0.195
2008	Reds (A+)	541	3.6 %	23.8 %	0.219
2009	Reds (AA)	464	4.4 %	20.8 %	0.22
2009	Reds (AAA)	99	4.2 %	26.1 %	0.239

You could maybe even pare that down to two cats if you wanted just to use his BB/K ratios, but with them seperate like this you can really feel the hackage. Unfortunately for Francisco, these aren’t really the peripherals of a major leaguer. His BB-rates put him in Yuni Betancourt territory. His K-rates aren’t the worst, but approaching untenable (especially given the low walk rate). The guy with the most similar ratio (at the MLB level, that is)? Aaron Rowand. And even Rowand walks a little over 5% (5.5%, to be exact).

The good news for Francisco is that he’s only 22 and has only got stronger by the year. As I mention (eventually) over at Hardball Times today, he’s fun to watch when he makes contact. Ball go far, indeed!

Jaff Decker, Little Guy, San Diego
Is it too soon to declare Jaff Decker a lock for major league stardom? Probably. Is it too soon to declare him a Sabermetric Hero? No way.

Say hello to these things:

Season	Level	PA	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA
2008	Rookie	216	55	36	0.352	0.523	0.541	0.509
2009	Low A	455	85	92	0.299	0.442	0.514	0.434

The 19-year-old Decker has more patience than certain Shakya Buddhists I’ve met. I swear, I don’t know if it’s a rumor, but I heard he’s got all of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Peace Is Every Step tattooed on his body. Regardless of whether that’s true, it’s obvious that Decker has an incredibly discerning batting eye.

Baseball Prospectus has Decker slashing .275/.421/.489 at his peak, with an EqA of .315 — the top projection in all the Midwest League. There are other, higher projected EqAs in the minors, but they mostly belong to physical specimens like Cody Johnson (6-foot-4, 230 lbs) and Mike Stanton (6-foot-5, 205 lbs). Decker’s listed in BA’s Propsect Handbook at 5-foot-10, 190 lbs with little projectability left in his frame. Regardless, he seems to have the chops to be a top flight hitter.

In other words: he’s a Natural.

Scott Gray’s The Mind of Bill James is an excellent book — one whose entire contents I’m tempted to reproduce here except for (a) it’d break every copyright law in existence and (b) all that typing would hella exacerbate my ulnar claw.

Anyway, believe me when I say that Gray does an excellent job of demonstrating the wide-ranging import of Bill James’s work. Believe me, also, when I say that Gray is smart to occasionally quote at length from the Abstracts and other of James’s books.

Which, that’s exactly what he does at the beginning of chapter three of the aforementioned book. Regard, the Master at work:

When the numbers melt into the language, they acquire the power to do all of the things which language can do, to become fiction and drama and poetry. Am I imagining things? Do not the numbers of Ted Williams detail a story of fierce talent and, by the char of their ugly gaps, the ravages of exquisite frustration that ever accompany imperfect times? Do not the numbers of Roberto Clemente spell out a novella of irritable determination straining toward higher and higher peaks until snapped suddenly by an arbitrary, but now inevitable, machina? Do not the stressed and unstressed syllables of Willie Davis‘ prime suggest an iambic indifference Is there not a cavalcata in Pete Rose’s charges? Is there no union of thrill and agony in Roger Maris‘ numbers? How else can one explain the phenomenon of baseball cards, which is that a chart of numbers that would put an actuary to sleep can be made to dance if you put it on one side of a card and Bombo Rivera’s picture on the other.

First off, I’d like to mention how, despite being alone in my living room when I first read that, I still stood up and began a Hollywood movie-style slow clap.

Second off, here’s the exciting idea that James gives us: that numbers are able to take on a narrative quality.

My reaction when I read that was something like: hey, I wanna play along. Lucky for me, I have a platform to do that.

So what I did was to isolate three players whose numbers tell an interesting story. Here they are.

Heath Bell, RHRP, San Diego
The story that Bell’s numbers tell us is of a pitcher whose talent was, in the parlance of our 43rd president, misunderestimated. The guilty club? Shockingly, the Mets. Yes, the same team whose bullpen effectively handed division titles to Philadelphia in both the 2007 and 2008 seasons didn’t have space for a pitcher who was posting good fielding-independent numbers. Regard Bell’s first three MLB seasons:

Season	Team	IP	gmLI	ERA	tRA	tRA*	FIP	xFIP	BABIP
2004	Mets	24.1	0.93	3.33	3.81	4.08	4.24	3.02	0.290
2005	Mets	46.2	0.75	5.59	4.01	3.98	2.91	3.39	0.374
2006	Mets	37.0	0.59	5.11	5.69	4.60	4.25	3.21	0.394

That gmLI thing, in case you don’t know, is the average Leverage Index of all the times a pitcher enters a game over the course of a season. One (1) is average. Below one indicates a low leverage situation. What those declining gmLIs show us is a team (New York) becoming increasingly hesitant to hand over important situations to one of its relievers (Bell). And if you look only at Bell’s ERAs, you’ll understand why. Were Bell’s 2005 and 2006 ERAs indicative of his skill, then New York’s reluctance would make sense. But cast your eyes rightward to the end of those rows, and you’ll see the more likely culprit for Bell’s seeming mediocrity: way inflated BABIPs. The most likely reason for Bell’s poor showing was a combo deal of bad luck and shoddy D. His tRA of 5.69 in 2006 is a red flag, but the regressed version (tRA*) from StatCorner and all the other sorts of metrics all say Bell wasn’t far off from his established levels.

In Novemeber of 2006, San Diego GM Kevin Towers sent Ben Johnson to New York for Bell and Royce Ring*. Johnson disappeared after 2007**. As for Bell? Ta Da!:

Season	Team	IP	gmLI	ERA	tRA	tRA*	FIP	xFIP	BABIP
2007	Padres	93.2	1.41	2.02	2.57	3.01	2.50	2.84	0.260
2008	Padres	78.0	1.57	3.58	3.62	4.18	3.34	3.87	0.291
2009	Padres	64.0	1.83	2.81	2.58	3.42	2.53	3.17	0.294

As you can see, he proceeded to be awesome. Awesomer than before, in fact. Whether that’s luck or actual improvement or because he had an established role, we don’t know. The point is, the talent was there. And even if said talent resided/resides in a sort of overweight-looking manbody, if said manbody strikes batters out and gets groundballs, who the eff cares?

*Setting off a nightmarish chain reaction of “Ring that Bell” puns across all America’s sports pages.
**Seriously. No dice from any of Baseball Reference, Baseball Cube, or Wikipedia. Is he okay?

David Hernandez, RHSP, Baltimore
Let’s play a game. The game is called One of These Things Is not Like the Other. The first thing you do is look at some numbers. Second, you say which one doesn’t belong. It starts right now.

Season	Team		IP	SO	K/9
2006	Orioles (A)	145.1	154	9.54
2007	Orioles (A+)	145.1	168	10.40
2008	Orioles (AA)	141	166	10.60
2009	Orioles (AAA)	57.1	79	12.40
2009	Orioles		91	59	5.84

Okay, so it’s not a super fun game, but at least it’s easy. What you see there are David Hernandez’s raw stats from 2006 – 2009. What you’ll notice is how is K/9 rates are super-good… in the minors. The Show hasn’t been very kind to Hernandez, right up to his most recent start versus Boston when he struck out only one in six innings.

Of course, the Average Reader is smart enough to say, “Well, sure, but those are just his raw minor league stats. Obviously his major league K-rates will be lower. The question is, How much lower?” Luckily for all of us, Jeff Sackmann’s on top of that junk. According to Minor League Splits, those same seasons (minus the 2009 MLB one) look alot like this:

Season	Team		MLE IP	MLE K	MLE K/9
2006	Orioles (A)	108.2	69	5.74
2007	Orioles (A+)	149.2	119	7.18
2008	Orioles (AA)	135.1	128	8.53
2009	Orioles (AAA)	57.2	66	10.38

It’s interesting to note how dramatically Hernandez improves across these four seasons. Speaking anecdotally, I’m not sure I’ve seen many pitchers exhibit such stark linear improvement. Usually you get some regression here, some break-out there. But those K-rates increase almost exactly 1.5 K/9 every year. It’s strange.

But I digress. Back to the point: What’s the story here?

Well, there are two, kinda. The first concerns Hernandez himself. It’s a story we’ve heard before, as Dave Cameron pointed out a couple months ago: a pitcher dominates the minors with deception and a good breaking pitch, gets promoted to the majors, and gets shelled. Yusmeiro Petit‘s story is similar. So is Brandon McCarthy‘s and Garrett Olson’s.

The other story is of the mystery genre. It’s not quite Poirot-level excellent, but pretty good. It concerns a whole team of scientists (read: sabermetricians) who are unable to find a key missing ingredient to solve a case. The “case” requires that they project a pitcher’s potential major league success based on his minor league numbers. What they (i.e. the scientists) have noticed is that some pitchers simply don’t pitch at the major leagues like you’d expect them to.

Meanwhile, a group of gritty, skin-of-their-teeth detectives (read: scouts) say it’s because those certain pitchers don’t have major league stuff. The scientists say…

Okay, I’m gonna stop that, for all of our sakes. Here’s the point: Hernandez is young and his performance could improve, but the fact remains that he’s fairing at the major league level almost exactly how his scouting reports and pedigree suggested he would. Fin.

Albert Pujols, Crusher, St. Louis
El Hombre’s numbers tell the story of a young Dominican who immigrated with his family to the US, attended Maple Woods Community College in 1999, and either during his stay there or at least some time before 2001, BECAME A BASEBALLING CYBORG.

There’s no other possible explanation for Pujols’s twin traits of durability and production:

YR	PA	wOBA	Rank (Among players with > 400 PA)
2001	676	0.421	12
2002	675	0.402	18
2003	685	0.462	2
2004	692	0.439	3
2005	700	0.436	3
2006	634	0.448	2
2007	679	0.414	13
2008	641	0.458	1
2009	637	0.458	1

It’s hard to divine exactly what sort of transformation Pujols might’ve undergone — more like a RoboCop/Megacorp dystopian law enforcement sort of scenario, or more like a Wolverine/Weapon X clandestine government op-type of situation.

The fact that ESPN has attempted to make light of Pujols’s “secret” via one of their light-hearted This Is SportsCenter commercials should only serve to (a) strengthen our conviction that Pujols is indeed half-man, half-machine, and (b) suggest that ESPN — and, by extension, Disney Corp. — is somehow behind this operation.

My guess? That Pujols’s body was originally constructed to replace the current Teddy Roosevelt in the Hall of Presidents, except then the Disney execs realized that Teddy Roosevelt wasn’t shaped like the Incredible Hulk.

Last week, as part of my purposeful attempt to single-handedly destroy FanGraphs, I submitted a question for the reader’s consideration: “Knowing what we know about the brain, is it possible that we might start to measure how happy certain baseball events make us?” The question, I suggested, got at what Bill James regards as the raison d’etre of baseball: as a thing to be enjoyed.

A number of the commentariat said, “No, and you’re a jerk.” Some others were more forgiving, but also suggested that it was, at best, a fool’s errand. Two or three guys sent me disgusting photos of themselves in various Manet-inspired poses. (Please stop doing that.) And finally one guy, Ken Arneson, said that, while it might be impossible, he was trying real hard to do it and that the field of neuroesthetics was helping.

If the name Ken Arneson is familiar, it’s because he was the owner-operator of both Humbug Journal and Catfish Stew, both of which (a) the author discontinued earlier this year, and (b) ought to be required reading for this nation’s children. It’s on those sites that Arneson explores the “Why we watch” question — sometimes explicitly, sometimes not as much.

Arneson consented to be interviewed last Friday by means of EtherPad, a program that allows multiple users to create and edit a document. Hence, the “etherview.”

Finally, I should note that, in what follows, Arneson and I use some discipline-specific terminology. All of these terms are explained in a six-part post that Arneson wrote at Humbug called “Keeping Score in the Arts”, a sort of primer on the subject of neuroesthetics. It is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you take a gander at said piece.

***

Carson: Because I’m from New England — a.k.a. Land of the Bucklehat — and because we have rules about this in New England, I’d like to start off by exchanging pleasantries. By which, I mean to say, “Hello. How are you?”

Ken: I have a two-year-old who is currently refusing to exchange pleasantries, so I need to set a good example. So: Hi, I’m fine, thanks!

Carson: Well, actually, your two-year-old might serve as a good entree to our discussion. We’re here because — well, I’m here because I write for FanGraphs. The reason you’re here is because your work on Catfish Stew and Humbug Journal is very literally the work of genius.

As for the two-year-old, in one of your posts on Humbug you get into a discussion about habituation. Habituation, or lack of it, is the thing that makes peekaboo funny for a young person* — because he/she hasn’t figured out that, merely because your face is gone, that it’s not actually gone-gone…

What I mean to say is: Does your two-year-old still like peekaboo?

*Ken writes about the art of peekaboo here.

Ken: No, she’s mostly past peekaboo now. You have to play a pretty sophisticated form of peekaboo now for her to have much interest. But it’s a good place to start the study of why we like what we like.

Any theory on measuring our enjoyment of entertainment, such as a Linear Weights of Joy or some such thing, has to account for how our tastes change throughout our lifetimes.

Carson: Right. Like you mention in one of your posts that a person, when coming into contact with art, is always sort of trying to find some place between cliche and unhabituation (your phrase). It’s hard for an adult to like Miley Cyrus or whatever because the hooks she uses and the lyrics (I love you, life is so complicated, blah blah blah) are roughly the same as all the pop music before it. The adult already gets it.

On the other side, if a work taps into absolutely nothing that’s familiar, then it (i.e. the work of art) is merely lost on its viewer, listener, whatevs.

Ken: Yes. My two year old won’t understand how cool Tim Lincecum’s pitching motion is. That goes right over her head. She does understand “throw” and “hit”. She’s got a lot of learning to go until she can understand that Lincecum’s pitching motion is unusual.

Carson: Restated: your child won’t understand how cool Lincecum’s pitching motion is, because she doesn’t know it from Adam (Wainwright’s pitching motion). There’s no point of reference there?

Ken: Right. To back up a bit, I started getting interested in the question of “Why do we like or dislike stuff” in college. I took a class in Comedy, thinking I’ll read some funny stories and have a good time. But my professor was obsessed with that question, and that class has stuck with me ever since.

The professor was convinced that the quality of the artwork was in the artwork itself. But I’ve since come to think that’s not quite right. Because the quality judgment depends on the audience. The two-year-old is going to think that Shakespeare sucks.

Carson: It’s true. Two-year-olds hate Shakespeare. They can barely even read!

Ken: My two-year-old thinks the greatest artwork in the world is an animated film with pandas who sing about potty training.

Carson: To be fair, that sounds kinda great.

Okay, to reiterate the “main point” of this. I wrote in my article that I’m surprised at how much time we spend answering the “how do you win” question as opposed to “why we watch” or “what we like” questions and b) that there is a lot of room to improve how we make the decision to watch one game versus another.

But, discussing children, I realize my 15-year-old brother, who plays all the sports in the world, can barely sit down long enough to watch a plate appearance of a baseball game. He’s a nice, smart kid, but we’re clearly watching two different things. At what point do our brains start develop a criteria for enjoying a game? Is it different for different people?

Ken: I think sports fans who visit sites like Fangraphs prefer to think about the “how do you win” question more than the average fan; that’s why they are there.

The great works of art work on multiple levels. They can work superficially on a first viewing, and keep giving you new and interesting things to see after multiple viewings. Mediocre works of art can be viewed maybe once or twice, but get boring after that. Bad works fail from the start.

Baseball is such a great sport because you can enjoy it at a 15-year-old level, but study it more and find brand new ways to enjoy it.

There comes a time, though, sometime in adulthood, where habituation (is this a novelty or not?) starts to take a back seat to classical conditioning (is this pleasurable or not?). You enjoy things now because you enjoyed them before.

My musical tastes froze when I had my first kid. I barely know any new music since 1997. I now mostly enjoy the music I listened to in my youth.

Carson: Benny Goodman? Patty Page?

Ken: My youth, not my father’s youth. I’m stuck in the 80s.

Carson: At Humbug you go into some depth describing the probable effect of art on the brain. You say that it’s a way for the Android Brain (which represents declarative memory) to talk with the Animal Brain (which represents nondeclarative memory). Now, I know you’re not wild about those terms now, necessarily, but the concept is interesting.

Essentially, art that doesn’t hit us on a gut level isn’t art at all.

Ken: Yes. At UC Berkeley, they’ve held an annual conference on neuroesthetics, of which I’ve attended a few. Neuroesthetics is a new science, which is basically the study of how the brain judges art. Attending the conferences kinda reminded me why I’m an engineer and not a scientist. They’re basically cataloging all the various components of art and brain science, but nobody seems to be in a hurry to theorize.

I’m not that patient, so I started taking what I had learned, and tried to theorize. Basically, my theory is this:

* We have two kinds of memory: declarative memory (which is conscious, and contains facts and events), and nondeclarative, or procedural memory (which is subconscious, and contains patterns and motor skills).

* Language is a tool for deliberately transferring declarative memories from one person to another.

* Art is a tool for deliberately transferring procedural memories form one person to another.

Carson: I want to connect that to baseball in a second. Before I do, though, I’m curious: What was the reaction to this stuff when you wrote it? This was March of 2004.

Ken: There wasn’t much reaction at all. “Oh, that’s interesting” was about it. But nobody engaged me on it. So I figure that either (a) I’m wrong, or (b) I’ll be like that guy who came up with plate tectonics and then was forgotten for 40 years or so.

Carson: Jerry Lewis?

Ken: Alfred Wegener.

Carson: Oh, right. I always get those guys mixed up.

Okay, so how this relates to baseball is… I mean, why is it that watching Roy Halladay’s two-seamer “completes me” in a way that almost nothing else does?

Ken: When you’re watching Halladay’s two-seamer (or for me it’s B.J. Upton’s swing) you’re using your procedural memory system. That’s the part of your brain that handles pattern recognition. That pattern is something that triggers a response that, at first, you view as highly interesting–that is, you’re not used to it, and it’s different enough each time that it still somehow surprises you each time you see it. Then as you see it more and more, you become classically conditioned to it–the initial pleasure begins to reinforce itself, and you want to see it again and again.

Carson: That idea of being surprised is interesting. The sociologist Barry Schawrtz discussed in his Ted Talk, “The Paradox of Choice” — he talks about how, on account of the there are so many of each product available now (chunky tomato sauce, old style tomato sauce, tex-mex tomato sauce) that it’s impossible to experience one of the most excellent feelings around — namely, the feeling of being pleasantly surprised. Instead, the consumer is always thinking, “Ah man, I would’ve probably been so much happier with the incredibly-similar-but-still-slightly-different tomato sauce.” The sense of regret is inevitable almost.

The poet Kenneth Koch championed surprise, as well. The poem “To You” is constantly surprising — and excellent for that reason.

Ken: Yes, but it’s not just surprise alone that makes us like something. It needs to both surprise AND fit the context. If I’m watching a game and the power goes out, that’s a surprise, but it usually won’t make me think the game has improved as a result. It kicks me out of the context instead of revealing something new about the context.

To create a new memory, you need two existing, unconnected neurons being fired by the same stimulus. A surprise that doesn’t match the context only fires the surprise neuron, not the context neuron. To put it another way, you need the stimulus to be simultaneously surprising AND not surprising, appropriate AND not appropriate.

That’s why peekaboo works. You’re there, but you’re not there.

Barry Bonds‘ home run feats are more surprising and impressive if you don’t have a clue that he took steroids, if you think what he did changes what you believe is actually humanly possible. Change the context, and the surprise goes away, and the pleasure with it.

Carson: What about Yuni Betancourt taking a walk? Because that would be really surprising.

Ken: Ha, yes. And if he did it to, say, win a pennant in a walk-off, it would be even more surprising. What a great story that would be.

Carson: Yes. Because it would also mean that the Royals had not only finished over .500 but made the playoffs…

Okay, well what I like about you, Mr. Arneson, is your willingness to produce some theories despite a lack of empirical evidence. I mean that honestly. It seems as though neuroscience and -esthetics is not prepared to say exactly what’s happening in the brain that allows us to enjoy this or that. Thing is, that doesn’t matter to me, Carson Cistulli, very much. What I need to know is: How does neuroesthetics help me right now (regardless of if the science is imperfect or not)?

So, to the matter at hand, my original concern: How do I know what game to watch tonight? What game is most likely to provide the certain experiences (plate discipline in batters, movement on pitches, etc) that I like? Is it possible to work towards a Linear Weights of Joy?

Ken: I can afford to theorize because I’m not a professor, and I have no career to damage by being dead wrong.

I think it is possible to works towards a Linear Weights of Joy, as long as you remember that where we’re taking the measurement isn’t on the field, it’s in your head. You have to measure Event X for Audience Y. And I’m not sure how you collect the measurement for Event X.

As for Audience Y, I suppose you could do a PECOTA-like method, where you cluster similar audience types, and then try to figure out which audience cluster you fall in, and then project which events you’d like from there. It would be like collaborative filtering technology, I guess, or the formula Malcolm Gladwell wrote about.

Carson: Do you think the appeal of certain baseball events varies that widely? It seems like certain things (i.e. Upton’s swing) are just inherently great.

Ken: It will vary quite a bit if you compare a two-year-old to a nine-year-old to a fifteen-year-old to an adult. But maybe not within the adult population, I don’t know. Perhaps, though, to keep things simple, you should start with a Marcel of Joy, and work your way up to PECOTA of Joy at a later date.

Note #1: A request. At the end of this piece, in the section called “Towards a Linear Weights of Joy,” I ask for actual substantive input on some questions about which I am a) curious and b) uncertain of how to answer myself. If possible, please limit your comments to the questions at hand. Having said that, I understand that some of you aren’t particularly fond of my contributions and take some pleasure in saying so. I would be remiss to rob you of said pleasure. For you, I invite you to email your complaints to ccistulli@yahoo.com.

Note #3: This crap is long. If you only read one part, read the last section, entitled “Towards a Linear Weights of Joy.”

Father of Us All Bill James writes the following in a blurb to a recent-ish release from ACTA Sports called Diamond Presence:

There are two things that one can never say often enough: one, that the game exists only to be enjoyed; and two, that there is no limit to the number of ways that it can be enjoyed. Diamond Presence shines a light upon these two truths.

First, a quick note on the source. I recognize that the literary genre known as The Blurb does not always promote integrity in its author. It’s designed to sell books and thus can fall prey to what is frequently referred to as “the Evils of Capitalism.” However, I believe for two reasons that James means what he says here. For one, he’s Bill James, and Bill James is not in the habit of making empty claims, regardless of the context. For two, James makes very similar statements in a number of the Abstracts, which texts are not in front of me here, but which I have read separately and in digested form in Scott Gray’s The Mind of Bill James. Always the sentiment from James is similar: “I have only ever used stats as a tool to further my enjoyment of the game.” In other words, James never makes the stats an end in themselves, but only as a means to the his enjoyment.

Furthermore, because he’s Bill James and more or less the progenitor of the statistical revolution in baseball, his words carry a weight that no one else’s really do. I believe that what James is doing in this blurb is what he has made it his business to do over the last 30 years: to make explicit an idea we might spend most of our time understanding only implicitly, perhaps precisely because it’s so simple a concept. Baseball exists to be enjoyed: no one would deny that claim, and yet I’m not sure we spend enough time considering it explicitly.

Let’s begin by considering the uses of the present interweb site. Ultimately, as a FanGraphs reader, my concern isn’t ever with the site’s excellent player analysis or sweet use of Pitch f/x technology, per se. Those things are great, yes, but ultimately, the reason I point my internet browser this way — the reason anyone would — is because I find it pleasing in some way. Restated: I’m interested in reading FanGraphs, in particular, and statistical analysis about baseball, generally, only insofar as it adds to my enjoyment of baseball and my overall happiness.

Which it does. But the question, which I haven’t seen answered expressly — or even asked, necessarily — is: How?

And furthermore: Are we doing the best job of enjoying baseball as possible? Are we being efficient with our time spent watching baseball?

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